


Visiting Hours

by Himmelreich



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4021630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Each visitor brings happiness - some by coming, some by going.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> I've been cleaning out old drafts, and decided to post this as it is. Since it is less upbeat in nature, I decided not to make it part of the series it was intended for originally, however.

Klancain’s visits were the easiest to bear, surprisingly. He came in company of royal guards, of course, but he made it a point of having them wait outside the visitor’s room. He did not fear Slaine, and even if it was hard to tell with someone Slaine had hardly gotten to know, he did not seem to outright despise him, either.

Their conversations were polite and superficial, Klancain talking about the progress of reforms and trade agreements, occasionally asking Slaine for his opinion. Slaine had no illusions that these questions were not only meant to humour him, and even if he should disagree with the Emperor, it would have no impact. Still, he appreciated the gesture, the small reminder that he was still alive, still capable of thinking for himself and phrase his opinion, and that there were still people willing to listen.

It was their mutual awareness of the poisonous unspoken questions littering their conversation grounds like land mines that had them fall into a pattern of diplomatic pleasantries instead. Slaine never asked if Cruhteo had ever raised his hand against his own flesh and blood the way he had against his entrusted servant. Klancain never asked if Slaine had truly loved the woman that he himself had married and sworn to protect until his death.

Nothing could be wrapped in so many words of more nothingness, and it was only ever after Klancain had left that Slaine realised just how little had been said. One day, the other man turned back when he was already almost by the door.

“My clan has begun rebuilding Tharsis from the remains we salvaged from the sea. I thought you might want to know.”<  
“I honestly pray that you will never have reason to pilot it, Your Highness.”  
Klancain had looked at him for a moment of silence, his piercing eyes so similar and yet so different from his father’s.  
“I thank you, Slaine Troyard.” 

_We could have been like brothers, once._  
  
\-----------------

Asseylum’s visits were both the ones he dreaded and longed for the most. The first time, she had appeared without any prior announcement, and he had barely been able to look at her through a mist of tears, tears he had not even known he still possessed after everything that he had done. She had laughed, then cried, then laughed while crying, and never once had she let go of his hands. Slaine’s eyes had been drawn to the delicate silver ring on her finger and the matching piece of jewellery around her neck, but he had never asked, not back then, and not during the visits that followed.

No matter how much he saw her mature over the course of time, the moment she stepped into his space, she lit up the place with her honest affection, telling him about all the wonders she had seen since her last visit with the same unrestrained enthusiasm she had had as a child, about all the things she had learned about both Earth and her own home far away. He mostly just listened, drowning in the sound of her voice, and trying to etch every little detail into his memory.

Her visits were rare and precious, and she apologised every time that she could not come more often, not stay longer, but he insisted that it did not matter. She had to save what he had not been able to, after all, and he was convinced she could. However, he soon realised the more he used that argument, the more her expression saddened, and so, he switched to simply accepting her words with a smile.

“I’ll never forget what you sacrificed,” she told him, her hands clutching his so tightly it almost hurt, “and I promise that one day, when all of this is over and the war truly in the past, we’ll be able to go back to how it used to be.”  
Slaine just shook his head.  
“Promise me that you’ll be happy, and I don’t need anything else.” 

_We could have been like lovers, once._

\-----------------

Lemrina refused to see him for a long time, and he was not sure whether to be grateful for or saddened by it. Eddelrittuo wrote him, often, about how the Imperial Family was holding up, about how she constantly was underestimated by Earth officials due to her age and how incredibly rude many of the Terrans still acted towards her, and she mentioned that the Princess missed him just as much as she wanted to punch him. Slaine smiled, keeping every letter safe in a box in his cell.

When she did come one day, it was with an expression that betrayed how determined she was not to cry. She taunted him for the entire time of her stay about what a fool he was, how much he deserved what he got for blindly running into the wrong direction, for leaving her behind, and Slaine listened without a word of objection, forcing his gaze not to rest on her trembling hands and glistening eyes as not to shatter her composure.

She ended her rant telling him how better off she was now than she would ever have been with him, now an accepted member of the royal family, that she had found a place to belong, and Slaine congratulated her from the bottom of her heart, wishing her well. She looked at him, and he saw the tears she held back with pure force of will. 

“I miss them,” was all she said, “and I miss you.”  
“Please forgive me.”  
There were no further words in reply, and instead he reached over the table to hold her hand until the guards told her it was time to leave.  
It took a long time after that until she returned. 

_We could have been like family, once._

\-----------------

Inaho Kaizuka’s visits were the ones that were the most frequent and the ones Slaine had the biggest trouble trying to categorise. The man he had fought to the death did not seem to come to gloat about his victory, nor did he seem to be very sympathetic of Slaine’s situation. Often, he asked him about details on operations during the war and on his assessment of the Vers Empire as a person who had knowledge of both worlds, and of that, Slaine could make sense.

What he could not understand, however, was when Inaho challenged him to duels in games or words, goading him into arguments and fights that were pointless and should by all logic have been meaningless, too. Yet, time and time again, he found himself being dragged along by some invisible force requiring him to provide a counterweight opposed to Kaizuka Inaho at all costs.

Slaine was not sure if he enjoyed it, if he would actively have searched out these opportunities if he had the freedom to choose, but as things were, Inaho set the rules, and all he did was play along or not. He lost as often as he won, their equilibrium as deceptively stable as it had been during the war, and still, there were no answers.

It was not the polite detachment Klancain showed towards him, nor the conflicted and honest emotions Lemrina held for him, let alone the mixture of sadness and gratitude Asseylum had voiced upon Slaine’s sacrifice and punishment. Inaho remained unreadable in his ongoing mission of keeping him company.

“Why do you care?” Slaine asked eventually. “I used to be your enemy, no matter what Asseylum asked of you, you don’t have to keep this up now.”  
“I don’t hate you,” Inaho replied, “and I don’t hate visiting you. That’s good enough of a reason, isn’t it?”  
“It wouldn’t be for most people.”  
Inaho regarded him calmly, his very appearance a reminder of all the reasons he should despise Slaine more than anything in the world, and yet he did not.  
“We didn’t start out as most people do,” he said, “and neither will we end that way. All we can do is move forward, whether you want to or not, and I’ll be there to make sure you will.” 

_We could be like friends, still._

 

 

 


End file.
